A Tech Lawyerhttps://atechlawyer.wordpress.com
The effect of technology on law and its practice and vice-versaThu, 07 Dec 2017 07:24:40 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngA Tech Lawyerhttps://atechlawyer.wordpress.com
Logic – all too sadly ignored in today’s world.https://atechlawyer.wordpress.com/2014/06/13/logic-all-too-sadly-ignored-in-todays-world/
https://atechlawyer.wordpress.com/2014/06/13/logic-all-too-sadly-ignored-in-todays-world/#respondFri, 13 Jun 2014 10:21:01 +0000http://atechlawyer.wordpress.com/?p=446]]>I see these errors committed all too often today. Sadly, I do not think enough people are familiar with the rules of logic to recognize them for what they are. That means referring to them by their labels is not enough to defeat them. One must now spend the time explaining the fallacy of the logic as opposed to the substance of the argument.

]]>https://atechlawyer.wordpress.com/2014/06/13/logic-all-too-sadly-ignored-in-todays-world/feed/0atechlawyer20140613-061727.jpgIn search of an RSS Readerhttps://atechlawyer.wordpress.com/2013/03/23/in-search-of-an-rss-reader/
https://atechlawyer.wordpress.com/2013/03/23/in-search-of-an-rss-reader/#respondSat, 23 Mar 2013 15:49:02 +0000http://atechlawyer.wordpress.com/?p=438]]>Being an attorney, I try to keep up with the news. I focus on law, technology, politics, and local events. To accomplish this, I use an RSS Reader to follow a plethora of blogs and websites (including my local paper the News-Press). For those of you not familiar with the term, RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and it is a standard that can be used by websites to share links and information about their posts. The series of links to articles provided by RSS is often called a feed. Many people and apps relied on Google Reader to manage and follow these feeds. However, Google has made the unfortunate decision to terminate Google Reader as explained in this blog post. This has lead to a blog and twitter campaign to #savegooglereader, including an online petition. Personally, I understand how Google thought Reader was underutilized because I, like I suspect many others, did not directly use the Google Reader website to access our feeds. Instead we used apps, often on mobile devices, which relied on Google Reader as a backend service to provide the feeds that the app would then manage/display on the mobile device. As a service, Google Reader kept track of new/read/unread messages and would enable the apps to sync this information across devices. So the demise of Google Reader, not only affects those people who directly utilized it to read thier feeds, but also all of the apps which relied upon it as a backend service to manage syncing.

Over the years, I have used a variety of RSS Readers on both the Android and iOS platforms. On Android, my preferred app was NewsRob, and on iOS it was originally MobileRss. Over time, the developers stopped updating MobileRss and it lost its ability to easy share articles to other services, such as Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter, and I had to find a new solution. I tried a number of the personalized magazine or curated apps, such as Pulse, Flipboard, Feedly, and Prismatic. But these apps only offered me the content they thought I should read based on their algorithms and did not allow me to directly read the feeds I selected, so I was dissatisfied and searched for an actual RSS feed reader. The one that best my criteria (more on that below) was Byline. Now with all the attention that RSS is getting, I decided to write this post about what I want in an RSS reader. I give credit to Feedly for being so active on Twitter in soliciting feedback about what users want and for developing a new backend service they call Normandy to replace the functionality of Google Reader.

I primarily use my iPad to read the news. Next most often is my iPhone (yes I converted from Android). Lastly, I rely on actual print media, though I am doing my best to move to all digital sources. So for me the solution has to work well on iOS. I like seeing cross platform support, because I will re-evaluate this decision when it is time for my next technology refresh. Minor segue, for me iOS’s reliability makes up for any limitations in customizability. The below items are not necessarily in priority order.

First and foremost, I am not interested in a pretty magazine layout. I know that has been all the rage for the past two years but I skim through hundreds of articles a day, and need a text based interface to choose which articles to read. Looking at a “list” style view enables me to rapidly select only those articles I want to read. Once selected, I do want to see the articles along with any graphics or pictures the author has included. I also, want to be able to mark articles as “read,” which I do not choose to read. This essentially removes those articles from the feed and they won’t be displayed again in the app. This is a separate function from “liking” or giving a “thumbs up” to an article.

Second, I want the articles to be cached for both faster access and offline reading. The caching should take place in the background and not unduly slow the down being able to select and read articles while the caching is occurring. This is an area where Byline is lacking, when caching is occurring the app becomes almost unresponsive and you have to wait before you can read articles. I understand needing to get the web view for the whole article, as it is the advertising that provides the financial wherewithal to create the content. Based on this only the text in the RSS Feed would be cached and to get the rest would require a live connection.

Third, is the ability to share articles. I primarily share articles in two fashions. One is on a personal level to my friends and family via Facebook. The other are articles of professional interest and I share those simultaneously to Linkedin/Twitter (usually via Linkedin’s integration with Twitter). When posting to Facebook, I would to be able to edit the title of the link and the summary of the info displayed (this is not as important as being able to easily share to Facebook, but it is my wish list after all). For the joint Linkedin/Twitter post, it is important to respect Twitter’s 140 character limit and use the shortened url as part of that count (which Linkedin native iOS app fails to do, it won’t let you post something over 140 characters from the app, even though when the url is shortened by Linkedin it will be under that limit). Additionally, it should be possible to share an article via email. I’d like to see support for Google Plus, even though currently I am not making much use of it.

Fourth, saving articles. I use both Pocket and Evernote and desire the ability to clip or save articles to either one as appropriate. I do not believe the app needs to have its own save for later functionality.

Fifth, I want to be able to review my articles by the feed they are sourced from. I like the idea of curated content, as a layer on top of my feeds. A feature I have not seen yet (I apologize if there is an app that does this and I’ve missed it) is one that combines the two types of functionality. The ideal app would present me a “feed” of personalized content that I could use to start my reading based upon my previous actual reading habits. I understand there is a challenge in just using reading articles as a method of determining topic preferences, because it is difficult to distinguish between marking as read and actually reading. But that would be the holy grail of personalization. Not to require a separate step of “liking” or giving a “thumbs up” to an article, but to automatically distinguish between articles I simply mark as read from the list view without reading, and those I actually read. However, I would be happy to use a liking method on articles I actually read to help generate the curated feed, if I did not have to “handle” the article twice. By this I mean that if an article was in the curated feed and in a subcribed feed, reading or marking read an article would mark the article as read in both places, regardless of the view the article is accessed from.

If you took the time to read all the way to end of this post I appreciate it and will certainly respond to any requests for additional information. I can be found on twitter @scotthertz.

]]>https://atechlawyer.wordpress.com/2013/03/23/in-search-of-an-rss-reader/feed/0atechlawyerCrashing the Third Party: Experts Weigh How Far the Government/Opposing Parties Can Go in Reading Your Email & Documents in the Cloudhttps://atechlawyer.wordpress.com/2012/08/16/crashing-the-third-party-experts-weigh-how-far-the-governmentopposing-parties-can-go-in-reading-your-email-documents-in-the-cloud/
https://atechlawyer.wordpress.com/2012/08/16/crashing-the-third-party-experts-weigh-how-far-the-governmentopposing-parties-can-go-in-reading-your-email-documents-in-the-cloud/#respondThu, 16 Aug 2012 11:12:19 +0000http://atechlawyer.wordpress.com/?p=430]]>This article Crashing the Third Party: Experts Weigh How Far the Government Can Go in Reading Your Email – Magazine – ABA Journal discusses whether one loses confidentially when sending documents via email, and by extension, when one stores documents in the cloud. This can be compared/contrasted with previous rulings on the expectation of privacy in bank records and phone numbers dialed. This is a area of increasing concern for both lawyers and their clients. Because the rights are no longer clearly defined and are being impacted by changes in technology, it is only by the retroactive application of rulings to the situations that the current expectations of privacy become clear. I think this is a topic that deserves more attention and I intend to share thoughts on it going forward.

It is also important to note that this issue is not limited to the Government, but raises the question in the civil litigation of whether the attorney/client privilege is breached by sharing confidential documents in the cloud or via email. Is email entitled to the same protections as paper mail sent through the post office? Should only the “envelope” data be considered exposed, or if the ISP or email provider scans the actual attachments for spam or viruses, has that caused a breach of confidentiality and hence a loss of the privilege?

]]>https://atechlawyer.wordpress.com/2012/08/16/crashing-the-third-party-experts-weigh-how-far-the-governmentopposing-parties-can-go-in-reading-your-email-documents-in-the-cloud/feed/0atechlawyerFlorida Supreme Court Mandates Use of Email for Service and E-Filing of documentshttps://atechlawyer.wordpress.com/2012/07/01/florida-supreme-mandates-email/
https://atechlawyer.wordpress.com/2012/07/01/florida-supreme-mandates-email/#respondSun, 01 Jul 2012 20:40:53 +0000http://atechlawyer.wordpress.com/?p=421]]>

This order SC10-2101 (as corrected) from the Florida Supreme Court mandates email service as of September 1, 2012 in civil, probate, small claims, and family law divisions of the trial and appellate courts. Email service in criminal, traffic, and juvenile divisions will be required as of October 1, 2013. Detailed instructions, including mandatory and optional items are included in the order, but it will take some time to sort out the new obligations imposed.

I would recommend that attorneys reevaluate how they handle “junk” email to ensure they receive proper notice. It is permissible to include secondary email addresses which can be monitored by an assistant or perhaps by a litigation support specialist on a firm wide basis, to ensure receipt of service is properly logged and notated in the firm’s case file.

The Court also in SC11-399 mandated electronic filing (e-filing) procedures for all documents filed in Florida Courts pursuant to Rule 2.525, starting with the civil, probate, small claims, and family law divisions of the trial courts, as well as for appeals to the circuit courts in these categories of cases, on April 1, 2013, except as may be otherwise provided by administrative order. E-filing will be required in the criminal, traffic, and juvenile divisions of the trial and appellate courts, on October 1, 2013, except as may be otherwise provided by administrative order. Additional details can be found on the Florida State Courts website. One important detail to be aware of is that even though service is deemed complete when the email is sent, e-mail service is treated as service by mail for the computation of time, as opposed to being treated like a fax.

Technology continues to play an increasing role in the practice of law, and Florida is moving towards the Court’s stated goal of “of a fully electronic court system.” I continue to believe that the ever growing prevalence of tablet use by lawyers will also cause paper to become less common in the court room. These changes will make it easier to keep all of your documents in electronic format, because that is how they will be need to be sent and received.

Ten One Design has released information about an upcoming stylus for the iPad. The big benefits are that the stylus will not have to be manually paired with the iPad to work and it will feature “palm rejection”. For those of you not familiar with the term, that means the app you are doing the writing in, will be able to easily differentiate between your hand resting on the screen (as it will naturally do while writing) and the pen or stylus. This will enable better recognition of handwriting and more precise highlighting or markups of existing text. Information from Ten One is below:

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You may have been hearing good things about Bluetooth 4.0. It’s a fast wireless connection, and is fully supported by the CoreBluetooth framework in iOS5.

Bluetooth 4.0 devices don’t need to pair with your iPhone or iPad, they just connect and work. Also, the battery life is dramatically better – think months or a year on a single coin battery. We’ve developed the first pressure-sensitive stylus for iPad that uses Bluetooth 4.0.

Sample hardware is available today. If you’d like to have support for this device in your app, email info@tenonedesign.com, and we’ll schedule a shipment for you.

Any application can take advantage of the features, but developers should use our free code to help them integrate.

Full pressure sensitivity.

Palm rejection capability.

Lights, buttons, music (ok, maybe not music).

Full details, name, pricing, etc coming soon.

Product will ship after FCC approval. If you’re a developer, the time to start testing is now.

]]>https://atechlawyer.wordpress.com/2012/03/05/new-and-exciting-stylus-news-from-ten-one-design/feed/0atechlawyerBlue Tiger StylusWhy Tablets Need a Stylus Optionhttps://atechlawyer.wordpress.com/2012/02/20/why-tablets-need-a-stylus-option/
https://atechlawyer.wordpress.com/2012/02/20/why-tablets-need-a-stylus-option/#respondTue, 21 Feb 2012 02:29:30 +0000http://atechlawyer.wordpress.com/?p=392]]>After reading a number of posts reviewing the Samsung Galaxy Note such as this one on Droid Life and one from Cnet discussing whether anyone really wants or needs a stylus, I decided to chime in from the standpoint of a student and a future lawyer. First, some background, I live firmly in both the Android and iOS worlds, by having an iPad 2 for a tablet and a Droid X2 for a phone, so this post is going to be platform agnostic. I have been using apps such as Kno (itunes link) and Westlaw Next (itunes link) as well as Apples own iBooks to read cases and PDF files for class and the various clerking/internships I have had. I think people are under the mistaken impression that the primary function of the stylus is for taking handwritten notes, as opposed to entering text with a keyboard (be it soft or mechanical). Although, having that option is nice, and is especially useful for capturing signatures, it is not the primary reason I want a stylus to be fully supported by a tablet. The pen has survived because it is a great tool for marking on paper. And that is how I want to use a stylus, marking up existing content be it text or pictures and annotating, as opposed to a means of navigating around the tablet OS or writing long documents by hand.

I need to be able highlight relevant sections of legal cases (ideally with multiple colors to choose from) and add notes in the margins. For school I often want to make simple annotations, such as a TC or AC next to the holding of the Trial or Appellate Court to distinguish it from the higher court rulings. I might want to make a section as the Rule of the case, or use a different colors for dicta and the holding. I find highlighting text using my fingers somewhat difficult in all of these apps. Yes, it can be done, but if there is a link in or near the text I am highlighting, I often find it “activated” taking me out of the case and to the linked material. Then, when I go back I am not at the same location in the case, but have to start again from the “top”. Additionally, because fingers are relatively large blunt instruments compared to the size of the text, it can be difficult to accurately touch the screen to select the exact words I want. I am becoming more adept in each of the applications at using the tools provided to adjust the highlighted area to be accurate, but it is not a frustration free experience.

Ideally, by using a stylus, the tablet would know I am highlighting or writing and would not activate or select a link. It would distinguish between the navigation being accomplished by fingers and the more precise and specific input from the stylus. It would enable me to readily change colors and annotate the material I am reading with a few words (optionally converted to text, but not that is not a necessity). I think that would be a more fluid experience than what is currently provided today. I agree that if I am going to take pages of notes, a keyboard (for me a mechanical one) provides an optimal method to do it. I will leave the comparison of note taking apps for another day, but for now I want to say, “Give me a stylus!” I am hoping that is Apples “one more thing” for the iPad 3, and it would work well with there interactive iBooks initiative. Further, Apple adding a stylus would make it “cool” as opposed to the throwback to the days of the Palm Pilot that some reviews see it as.

A federal judge in a contract case has excused compliance with a discovery agreement that would have required the plaintiff to produce an estimated 65 million documents, finding it would cost too much to screen them for privilege.

“This case highlights the dangers of carelessness and inattention in e-discovery,” District Judge Dickinson Debevoise wrote in a Dec. 9 ruling. “While Plaintiff should have known better than to agree to the search terms used here, the interests of justice and basic fairness are little served by forcing Plaintiff to undertake an enormously expensive privilege review of material that is unlikely to contain non-duplicative evidence.

Without the effort and understanding of the judge in this case, the plaintiff would have been overwhelmed by the costs of complying with the e-discovery agreement.

]]>https://atechlawyer.wordpress.com/2011/12/22/e-discovery-judge-saves-party-from-overwhemling-document-review/feed/0atechlawyerLegalZoom Sues North Carolina State Bar, Seeks to Register Legal Services Planhttps://atechlawyer.wordpress.com/2011/10/11/legalzoom-sues-north-carolina-state-bar-seeks-to-register-legal-services-plan/
https://atechlawyer.wordpress.com/2011/10/11/legalzoom-sues-north-carolina-state-bar-seeks-to-register-legal-services-plan/#respondTue, 11 Oct 2011 17:03:47 +0000http://atechlawyer.wordpress.com/?p=385]]>Changes driven by the internet and “cloud computing” continue. Where exactly is the line between providing forms for use via the internet and giving legal advice in a jurisdiction where the attorney is not admitted? How does that change when the attorneys are actually giving advice on how to fill out the form? How does change if the person giving advice is not an attorney? Technology continues to blur these lines and affect how business accomplish their goals.

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The online legal document company LegalZoom has sued the North Carolina State Bar in an effort to gain registration for its legal services plan. The suit also seeks a ruling that its business model doesn’t constitute the unauthorized practice of law, according to a press release and the Raleigh News

]]>https://atechlawyer.wordpress.com/2011/10/11/legalzoom-sues-north-carolina-state-bar-seeks-to-register-legal-services-plan/feed/0atechlawyerTop NJ Court Changes Rules re Eyewitness ID, Calls for More Pretrial Scrutiny, New Jury Instructions – News – ABA Journalhttps://atechlawyer.wordpress.com/2011/08/25/top-nj-court-changes-rules-re-eyewitness-id-calls-for-more-pretrial-scrutiny-new-jury-instructions-news-aba-journal/
https://atechlawyer.wordpress.com/2011/08/25/top-nj-court-changes-rules-re-eyewitness-id-calls-for-more-pretrial-scrutiny-new-jury-instructions-news-aba-journal/#respondThu, 25 Aug 2011 17:14:48 +0000http://atechlawyer.wordpress.com/?p=378]]>In a landmark ruling today, the New Jersey Supreme court changed procedural and evidentiary rules concerning eyewitness identification of suspects, saying that 30 years of scientific research had showed it to be less reliable than once thought.Depending on the circumstances of an arrest, suspects will be offered a greater opportunity to explore and challenge eyewitness identifications prior to trial. And juries will be offered new instructions to inform them about issues with eyewitness evidence, explains Supreme Court Chief Justice Stuart Rabner in the courts unanimous opinion PDF.An Associated Press article provides further details about the ruling.

]]>https://atechlawyer.wordpress.com/2011/08/25/top-nj-court-changes-rules-re-eyewitness-id-calls-for-more-pretrial-scrutiny-new-jury-instructions-news-aba-journal/feed/0atechlawyerTop NJ Court Changes Rules re Eyewitness ID, Calls for More Pretrial Scrutiny, New Jury Instructions – News – ABA Journalhttps://atechlawyer.wordpress.com/2011/08/25/top-nj-court-changes-rules-re-eyewitness-id-calls-for-more-pretrial-scrutiny-new-jury-instructions-news-aba-journal/
https://atechlawyer.wordpress.com/2011/08/25/top-nj-court-changes-rules-re-eyewitness-id-calls-for-more-pretrial-scrutiny-new-jury-instructions-news-aba-journal/#respondThu, 25 Aug 2011 17:14:48 +0000http://atechlawyer.wordpress.com/?p=377]]>In a landmark ruling today, the New Jersey Supreme court changed procedural and evidentiary rules concerning eyewitness identification of suspects, saying that 30 years of scientific research had showed it to be less reliable than once thought.Depending on the circumstances of an arrest, suspects will be offered a greater opportunity to explore and challenge eyewitness identifications prior to trial. And juries will be offered new instructions to inform them about issues with eyewitness evidence, explains Supreme Court Chief Justice Stuart Rabner in the courts unanimous opinion PDF.An Associated Press article provides further details about the ruling.